World Rugby’s Attempt at Ring Fencing: An Opinion on The World League
In a recent joint announcement the Six Nations and Rugby Championship national unions confirmed that the proposed World League would be going ahead starting in 2026. The tournament will run every two years, between World Cups and Lions Tours, and will replace June and November internationals for those years. There will be twelve teams, the Six Nations and Championship teams plus two unions that will receive invitations to join SANZAAR (likely Fiji and Japan).
This has been a very controversial topic as it seems counterproductive to World Rugby’s stated goal to grow the game globally. While there will be a second division made of Tier Two nations, there will not be relegation and promotion until 2030. And then there is no real guarantee. Even with relegation only one perhaps two teams would move up to get Tier One matches every two years. This tournament replacing July and Autumn internationals ensures that Tier Two nations cannot blood themselves semi-regularly against the top teams.
Most at loss for this is Georgia, who have shown they can compete with the big nations, they bested Italy and Australia, and their U20s just put Argentina to the sword and were rightfully disappointed they could not also take down South Africa. Georgia’s progress will now be slowed considerably. Since 2016 they had played the Six Nations and Championship teams fourteen times (excluding world cup matches), as well as a match against Argentina XV, and they had a pair of matches against South Africa and Scotland cancelled. Scotland and Wales have been their most consistent opponents, they have met both teams four times since 2016 and will play Scotland again next month. Additionally, only Scotland, Italy, and Argentina XV have played in Georgia during that time period (Scotland would’ve done so twice).
With this new system, what guarantees will Georgia have that they will get regular matches against the big boys? It is abundantly clear that this game time against the top sides in the world has been paying dividends for them as they continue to rise up the global rugby ladder and prove their mettle in the test arena. There seems to be very little, they may be lucky to get a couple of matches every world cup cycle rather than about two every year. And it will likely be worse for other nations who have yet to ascend to the level of quality that Georgia have been diligently cultivating.
Teams like Samoa, Tonga, Uruguay, Chile, Namibia, Portugal, the United States, and Romania will almost assuredly be included in the second division alongside Georgia, and will collectively see very few Tier One matches between 2026 and when promotion may become possible in 2030, which would mean a team wouldn’t be promoted till 2032. At that point most will have gone half a decade with, at best, a couple of Tier One matches, maybe some matches against development sides, and will be set up for failure due to a lower level of preparation that is outside their control, just to be knocked right back down into the second division. The United States is set to host the 2031 World Cup, if they cannot get any Tier One matches ahead of the event, how will there be any hope that they can compete, granted there are many areas that USA Rugby needs to improve to compete in the future.
Ultimately, this World League is short sighted and driven by money rather than wanting to grow the game. A better alignment and tweaking of the current tournaments would be far more beneficial to World Rugby, especially in the long run. Ensuring the security of the professional and international game and including more nations in high quality matches will help make the game sustainable and continue to grow. Perhaps, even some greater level of decision making, maybe some more votes for the other “Full Member Nations.” There are over a hundred full members in World Rugby, but only ten, you can guess which, have full voting rights with three votes each, while Japan gets two, and Canada, Georgia, Fiji, Samoa, Romania, United States and Uruguay all get one. So out of one-hundred and eight full members only eighteen have any votes, and eight of those have one-third of the voting power of the other ten.
If World Rugby is truly committed to growing the game globally, and not just propping it up in a few chosen nations as they have always done, they need to put forth plans and actions to get the other nations more involved and draw a wider range of fans. Instead of pushing them to the side and giving those nations some token positions here and there. If the powers that be in rugby continue to go this route then rugby will always be a niche sport.
